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Boehner to Obama: Fire All Economic Advisers

Clearly, President Obama’s economic advisers’ policies have failed to produce any signs of economic recovery. A new report shows that 48 out of 50 states have lost jobs since the “stimulus” was enacted in February 2009. According to the report, government employment in Washington DC has increased while private sector jobs have stagnated across the country. Despite the loss of 2.5 million private sector jobs since 2009, the Obama administration continues to tout the “success” of the “stimulus” on their propaganda filled summer tour.

In his speech today, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) called on Obama to fire all of his economic advisers starting with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and White House adviser Larry Summers. Recently, Tim Geithner wrote a New York Times column titled “Welcome to the Recovery." In his column, he claims that:

the actions we took at its height to stimulate the economy helped arrest the freefall, preventing an even deeper collapse and putting the economy on the road to recovery.

Of course, this is far from the truth. No government in history has ever spent a country into prosperity. On the contrary, government “stimulus” programs have made the economy worse by preventing the growth of the productive private sector. Due to the unpopularity of the “stimulus”, Obama’s economic advisers have purposely removed the word stimulus from their vocabulary. The “stimulus” has been such a disappointment that Obama’s economic advisers now refer to it as the “recovery act.” Whether it’s called the “stimulus” or the “recovery act”, the plan has still likely prevented the creation of 10 million jobs in the private sector.

Minority Leader John Boehner is not alone in his recommendation that Obama should fire his entire economic team. According to Representative Connie Mack (R-FL),

From his questionable role in the AIG bailout to his mishandling of our economic recovery, Secretary Geithner has been a disappointment from the start.

Needless to say, the current state of the economy makes it difficult for anyone to defend the flawed “stimulus.” In fact, Christina Romer recently resigned as Obama’s Chief Economic Advisor midstream into her appointment. Romer was a co-author of a study back in 2009 that claimed that the “stimulus” would keep unemployment below 8 percent. According to the Washington Post,

Christina Romer said Friday that she wishes she could redo one of her first official acts for the president: last January's forecast that a big shot of federal spending would save millions of jobs and keep the unemployment rate under 8 percent. The forecast was wrong.

Instead, the unemployment rate has remained above 8 percent since February 2009. In late 2009, the unemployment rate reached double digits and has hovered around 10 percent ever since. It’s no wonder that Romer decided to give up her job defending a “stimulus” plan that has failed by its own measure. As House Minority Leader John Boehner said in his speech regarding the resignation of Budget Director Peter Orszag and Christina Romer,

Clearly, they see the writing on the wall, and the president should too.

House Minority Leader John Boehner is correct that America needs a “fresh start.” One solution is to fire Obama’s economic advisers who refuse to admit that the “stimulus” was indeed a colossal failure. Hopefully, Tim Geithner and Larry Summers will be the next to follow in the direction of top economic advisers that have already resigned from the Obama administration. America’s economic policy needs to pursue a new course that focuses on lowering taxes and eliminating harmful regulations instead of repeating the same old “stimulus” economic policy that got us into this deep mess in the first place.

As the Trump administration seeks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, a key issue for U.S. trade negotiators is better and more enforceable protections of intellectual property (IP) rights. This must include more legally binding protections of patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and other engines of invention and creation, which face a growing array of threats in foreign markets, including even our closest North American trade partners.

A recent Wall Street Journal article has surprisingly good news: US companies are seeing the highest profit growth in two years with “two consecutive quarters of double-digit profit growth for the first time since 2011.” This surprisingly comes not from policies pursued in Washington, but the hard work of the private sector.

For the second time this year, a city has found that there are no quick fixes to addressing poverty and raising wages. Recently, the city of Seattle funded a study on the impact its minimum wage increase was having and concluded that it was having a negative impact on the city’s economy. As is surprising to no one who has been paying attention to the effects of the minimum wage over the past few years, it has reduced employment, economic growth, and works hours.

Last month, Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-Conn.) announced that he will not seek, and he will not accept, the nomination of his party for another term as governor. This is not all that surprising as he sits at at a 66 percent disapproval rating, tying him for the second highest disapproval rating of any governor.

On Friday, March 24, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh vetoed a new $15 minimum wage that would have been implemented by 2022. This makes passing the measure’s future in serious doubt since an override of the mayor’s veto requires 12 out of 15 city council members to vote against and already several who voted for the measure have decided not to support an override.

FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon released the following statement following Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s speech on tax reform, coming one day after FreedomWorks released its Six Principles for Fundamental Tax Reform:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report last month projecting an increase in the federal budget deficit relative to the gross domestic product (GDP) for the first time since 2009. The deficit for this year is now expected to be $590 billion. As a percentage of GDP, that is 3.2% compared to last year’s 2.5%. It is not good news when the deficit is growing faster than the economy, which is currently growing at 1.4%.

In 1930, Congress passed the Tariff Act introduced by Sen. Reed Smoot (R-Utah) and Rep. Willis Hawley (R-Ore.). The bill raised tariffs -- or taxes paid on imports into the United States -- on more than 20,000 imported goods. Against the advice of more than 1,000 economists, President Herbert Hoover signed Smoot-Hawley into law.